As executive director of Michigan Health Connect, Doug Dietzman has helped the organization — which was established in March 2010 as a nonprofit Health Information Exchange — grow to include 49 hospitals statewide.

Michigan Health Connect currently covers more than 80 percent of the counties in Michigan’s lower peninsula, and nearly 700 provider offices are using the organization for clinical data exchange.

Dietzman also is a member of the 2011 Connecting Communities Steering Committee for the eHealth Initiative based in Washington, D.C.

“Doug is a sought-after leader in health information exchange and is constantly working to help others be successful,” said a colleague who nominated Dietzman for Thought Leaders in Health Care. “He has a clear vision and a motivating personality, which positively impacts those who work with him.”

Why did you settle on health care as your career focus?

As a new associate with Andersen Consulting (now Accenture) in the late 1980s, I had a partner approach me about spending a couple months researching “HMOs” and “managed care” with an intent to train our client teams on these emerging trends. This intense immersion into the topic launched a lifelong interest in both the financing and delivery components of the health care system.

While the history between these components has often been strained, I have been fascinated by the opportunity to look past the traditional barriers to the core incentives and ways they can work together to accomplish their goals of taking better care of their members/patients.

What do you believe is your top accomplishment?

Staying engaged with strong, gifted, passionate people.

What we are accomplishing today through Michigan Health Connect is a direct result of the commitment of otherwise competitive health care systems in Michigan agreeing to collaborate, and not compete, on clinical data exchange. It is an honor to work with these leaders who are following through on their organizational missions to better care for the people in the communities they serve.

Similarly, I am blessed to be working with a great team that is committed to accomplishing our health information exchange goals here in Michigan.

If you could instantly change one thing about your industry, what would it be?

I would like to see the private-sector health care organizations across the country take a greater lead in working together to solve this health information exchange challenge. We should not be looking to the state or federal governments to implement or fund this solution for us.

As health care organizations in our areas become more digital, we must think beyond our own parochial enterprise walls and be proactive about how we’re going to interconnect on behalf of our patients. Sustainable clearinghouse business models have been in place on the administrative/financial side of health care for many years. I believe that same opportunity exists on the clinical side, as well, if we can get beyond the hype and traditional competitive barriers. Michigan is providing a good example for the country in this regard.

What’s the greatest challenge facing health care today?

The volume and pace of change.

There are a number of extremely large, mandatory efforts that health care organizations must figure out how to do at the same time. Meaningful use, computerized physician order entry, bundled payments, ICD-10 code transition, accountable care, health information exchange, outcome-based payment incentives, health insurance exchanges, medical group development, mergers, etc. are large transformations impacting both the financing and clinical care sides of the business.

It is often said that the only thing that doesn’t change in health care is the certainty of change itself, so keeping up will continue to be a key challenge.

It is exciting to be part of an industry that must continually redefine itself and meet the challenges of a new day. These challenges and changes bring with them the opportunity to realize further advancements in safety, quality, security, efficiency, timeliness, collaboration and overall health.

Most of us have stories in our family where the health care industry didn’t work as well as it should because data didn’t move between care settings efficiently. Family members then had to be the “HIE” to make sure data got where it was needed for their loved one with all the pressure and emotion that goes with it.

Our greatest opportunity is to take that burden off of our communities and ensure data gets where it is needed, when it needs to be there.